New York, USA - During the General Assembly Presidency of H.E. Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar (2011-2012), a Resolution was passed to create Global Parents Day to be celebrated each year on June 1st. The Resolution went into effect this month and was duly commemorated by a special luncheon in the newly renovated UN Delegates Café on June 4th, organized courtesy of a fellow NGO, the Universal Peace Association, whose UN Representative, Lynn Walsh, was recently elected Co-chair of the NGO Committee on the Family.
Several Missions sponsored the event: Burundi, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Romania, Samoa, and Saint Lucia, and several Ambassadors and NGO representatives attended. One of the speakers, the Ambassador of Nigeria, H.E. Joy Ogwu, celebrated parents by mentioning the tremendous importance of the family in African culture. One word in particular stood out from her remarks about the family and parents: they are “inviolable.” I wish all of the UN would accept that!
Ambassador Al-Nasser also spoke and was obviously very proud of his accomplishment. He too, paid tribute to the sacrifices parents make for their children, how they struggle to make things better for them and the education they give them - especially moral education.
The series of short speeches was followed by [Seiko Lee] who (appropriately) sang the touching Italian operatic aria “O mio babbino caro” as a tribute to fathers, followed by “Climb Every Mountain” (from "The Sound of Music")….which all attending UN interns must (and will) do as they move on to employment in the “real world!”
We missed the family/life NGO members who live across the United States and all around the globe who could not be with us to share this joyous moment.